Friday Dispatch: Seeing in the Dark

Neighbors, nervous systems, and need

Friday greetings,

This week, I asked my Facebook friends what topic(s) they’d suggest for this week’s Dispatch. Instead of trying to write something direct and cohesive about the responses (in italics below), I’ve compiled a composite of moments from my week that might reflect them more obliquely. I hope there is something of use for you here.

Some friends of mine and I are having a conversation about how to continue caring when you feel hopeless. Same conversation included how important community is for this time.

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I'm starting on nervous system regulation and continuing work with media boundaries. I think it may have to do with how to break open my information bubble.

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How to build community and still stay safe from Covid for those of us who are seriously trying to avoid it and have done so, so far.

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The significance of winter solstice and how that weaves through “the holidays” we celebrate this time of year. And how, when we often go through the motions of these year after year, we might begin to find a new, deeper, more fulfilling meaning in this time of year to carry us forward.

Our awesome handyman Ben installed our new bright pink Little Free Library on Monday morning. It has already elicited sweet exchanges with neighbors I hadn’t previously met as they walked by our house. The mail carrier was also a big fan. I can’t wait to see it fill up. We are also planning to paint our front door to match.

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I took a walk with a neighbor I had met before, though only briefly when he gave us one of his extra Harris-Walz signs this fall. (As an aside, I have not been able to bring myself to toss it. It’s sitting sadly against the gate to the backyard.) Turns out his dog died not long ago and he’s trying to still get himself out for his daily walk. Chalupa is not a big walker – she usually kind of freezes if we get too far from home, and she defines “far” as one or two driveways down the street. But on this day, for some reason she went along willingly. Maybe it was the novelty factor of walking with someone new. In any case, we had the loveliest chat. He told me about the rabbi he met when he served in the Air Force, and we played Lower East Side Jewish geography, though he believes religion is the root of all evil.

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I gave our immediate neighbor a bag of russet potatoes, because instead of two potatoes in an Instacart order, we received two BAGS of potatoes.

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I really love knowing neighbors. I also really love spending time with elders. When I was around seven years old, I took a sign language class at a local school for the deaf. This was back in Buffalo. I just wanted to learn sign language. My learning partner was an old woman. I wonder now how old she really was. She could very well have been my age, given what would have seemed “old” to me then.

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On Wednesday, my mom and I played a “match” game after getting her packed for a short trip. We also realized we were literally matching in our blue sweaters.

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Funny that we talk about the work of “letting things change.” Things change, whether we “let” them or not. I suppose what we mean by this is acceptance.

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Acrylic paints and two small canvases on my desk, waiting for me. Me waiting – for what?

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This line from Asia Suler: “When we begin to live from our original beauty, instead of the wounds that mire us in self-doubt, we bring the undeniable power of our creativity back into alignment with the wider dream of the world.”

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Time with a few friends this week, over Zoom and over lunch. The tender balm of being seen, being able to be honest, and having that vulnerability reflected back as beauty, not failure.

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Do you know the 2001 book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield? What a great title. It’s right up there with Alan Lew’s This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, which I reference often.

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This week: After the elation, the logistics. After the calling, the reality. After the dreaming, the dishes. After the expectation, the adapting. After the disappointment, the self-compassion. We are in a forever-moving state of before and after, and so often missing the here and now.

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This morning on my run, I listened to Regina Spektor. What a brilliant lyricist. In Machine, she sings:

Living in your prewar apartment
Soon to be your postwar apartment
And you lived in the future
And the future
It's here
It's bright
It's now

The song is all about being plugged into (a/the) machine, where everything we say and do and think and purchase is recorded, downloaded, uploaded, upgraded, downgraded, liked, loved, blocked, clicked, saved to the cloud, fed to the algorithm.

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I told Aviva this week how sometimes I feel like I lose my footing and regain my footing multiple times a day. Maybe you can relate?

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Yesterday, a dear friend offered me these words: “Feet on the ground.” I hadn’t said anything to her about what I’d told Aviva. She could just hear and see that I was all aflutter, all airy-fairy overwhelm, all up in my head. And I needed to bring. it. down.

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Run, sun, breath, sweat, shower, sing, lather, rinse, cry, connect, release, repeat. If you can’t run, sit and feel your breath filling your rib cage, traveling up and down your spine, as I did when M.J. practiced a 10-minute sequence on me for their yoga teacher training.

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My friend told me you can’t hum and be anxious at the same time. Did you know this? Imagine a world of everyone humming. Imagine a world where we put our phones away during meals, as I’ve been making a point of doing after confronting my own uncomfortable compulsions.

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We need each other. We need each other.

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These are _____________ times. What’s the first word you think of?

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My book is coming soon! It’s called Fierce Encouragement: 201 Writing Prompts for Staying Grounded in Fragile Times. Michelle Hobbs, someone I know from my Vermont days, designed the cover in a wonderfully collaborative process. (She also designed the covers of my other three books.)

The prompts are from writing groups I created and led 2014-2020, culminating at the beginning of the pandemic. I created them to help people get words flowing, but something additional unfolded over those years. The writing was grounding. The practice was grounding. The times? They were, and are, so very fragile.

I don’t have a date or link yet, but will soon, so stay tuned. I am overjoyed to be releasing this book out into the wild, filled with curiosity about how it will go and where it will land and who will pick it up, hoping, maybe, for something to help them through the fog, the fear, the inertia, the harsh critic, the doubt. Move through these, and little by little, find more flow, more ease, more tolerance for the days when all you write is total dreck, more discovery.

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Please, let’s help each other keep going. Stop and talk to a neighbor. Make a Zoom or lunch date. Sit quietly with a hand on your belly, breathing. Notice what regulates your nervous system and what amps it up. Put your phone somewhere, like my mom used to put the phone in a literal drawer during dinner times when we were growing up, cord and all.

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Tomorrow is the winter solstice. We made it, my friends. The light always comes back. For now, what if we take the time to let our eyes adjust to the dark, to where we can see each other, even here, even now?

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Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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